Windows 8: Does AMD's Bulldozer Architecture Benefit?

By Thomas Soderstrom
published

Shortly after AMD's Bulldozer architecture launched, AMD had us anticipating a couple of hotfixes that were supposed to improve FX-8150's performance. But Windows 8 was the ultimate goal. Now that the operating system is out, does it help FX-8150?

Benchmark Results: 3D Games

Because Battlefield 3's single-player campaign is so graphics-bound, we don't expect optimizations for processor performance to have much effect. And as suspected, changes attributable to Windows 8 (or even a fully-patched Windows 7) don't yield any benefit.

In contrast to Battlefield 3, the hotfixes for Windows 7 appear to hurt performance in DiRT Showdown, which wasn't around when we took our first look at those Bulldozer architecture-specific operating system updates. Fortunately, Windows 8 ameliorates those issues, yielding just over 4% compared to Windows after a round of automatic updates.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is sensitive to processor performance. However, Windows 8 doesn't really affect its performance running on AMD's FX-8150.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
109 Comments Comment from the forums
  • agnickolov
    Of particular interest to me is that compilation with Visual Studio does slow down a bit on Windows 8. Not what the story was about, but still a valuable tidbit...
    Reply
  • boogien8
    LOL awesome! the last line of this review is epic!
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    O MY GOD ! 2% win for AMD ! I knew Win8 would be the holy grail of BD/PD.

    /s
    Reply
  • DjEaZy
    ... gonna get me a FX 8350 anyway... it's cheep as dirt and i have the platform...
    Reply
  • Crashman
    boogien8LOL awesome! the last line of this review is epic!That last line is the result of AMD creating unrealistic expectations for Windows 8. Things have gotten somewhat better for AMD since Piledriver launched, it's too bad that this article was written before that launch :)
    Reply
  • amuffin
    !Hype!
    Reply
  • silverblue
    I wouldn't mind seeing if, with Windows 8 and the 8350, hardware can take full advantage of the software instead of the other way around. I was a little dubious about blaming Microsoft in the first place - this isn't quite the Vista scheduler and Phenom all over again.

    Good article. :) It does seem that the patches create more problems than they solve, so I'd be inclined to ignore them if I had an FX on Windows 7.
    Reply
  • esrever
    Nice to see this finally tested, looks like the performance boost isn't significant enough to matter but at least there is a 1% increase. AMD can use all the minor performance boost they can get at this point.
    Reply
  • belardo
    Throw in the Intel i5-3550 and 3570K CPUs with Win7 and Win8 and see what the numbers say... wouldn't that be fair to see the difference as well?

    DjEaZy... gonna get me a FX 8350 anyway... it's cheep as dirt and i have the platform... Yeah, if you already have the board and memory, its mostly logical. But for someone going for a rebuild... it is not, especially if you live near a Microcenter.

    I paid $190 for my i5-3570K CPU, $90 for my Z77 gigabyte motherboard which out-does AMD 900 Series boards. Z77 have native USB 3.0, SATA 3.0, PCIe 3.0... AMD doesn't have PCIe 3.0 until 2014. And unless you get an A-Series CPU, you don't have native USB 3.0 either.

    This, an AMD boards are a bit more costly and more complicated.

    The OTHER AMD problem is that they are packaging clean CPU coolers with their CPUs... they are loud!! So add $25 for a good replacement. The extra costs for electricity doesn't help.

    Reply
  • 9538570 said:
    Nice to see this finally tested, looks like the performance boost isn't significant enough to matter but at least there is a 1% increase. AMD can use all the minor performance boost they can get at this point.
    The Emperor's New Clothes
    Reply